US TV revenue increased by over 4% in 2022 to reach $222.5 billion. SVOD, vMVPD, and connected TV growth overcame weak performance from traditional TV and transactional media. Read the details below.
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Total US TV revenue increased in 2022
The revenue generated by US TV grew by $9 billion between 2021 and 2022, from $213.4 billion to $222.5 billion. Growth was led by SVOD and CTV ads, and revenue from the big TV channel bundle and traditional TV ads eked out small gains while digital and disc rentals and sales continued to decline.
Video and disc rentals and sales
Video ownership and rentals represented the smallest share, 2.9%, of TV revenue and are also declining. According to DEG, revenue declined from $7.2 billion in 2021 to $6.4 billion in 2022. Disc transactions led the decline, with sales and rentals falling by 20%. Revenue from disc sales was $1.6 billion, and disc rentals were $0.6 billion. Digital sales held their ground at $2.5 billion, while rentals declined by 14% to $1.7 billion.
Big bundle of TV channel subscriptions
Subscriptions to a big bundle of TV channels delivered $99 billion in 2022 and were the largest category of US TV revenue, with a 44%
share. Cable, satellite, and telco TV revenue decreased by 1.7%, though not as much as subscribers, which tumbled by 9%. Subscription price increases mitigated the subscriber losses. vMVPD revenues from services like YouTube TV and Sling TV grew strongly, increasing by 27% to $11 billion.
SVOD
Revenue from SVOD services increased from $25.5 billion in 2021 to $30.0 billion in 2022. Its share of total TV revenue also increased from 11.9% to 13.5%. The revenue growth was driven by two factors. According to TiVo, viewers increased the number of SVOD services they used by one in 2022. Price increases also helped boost revenue growth.
TV advertising
eMarketer says ad revenue from traditional and connected TV grew in 2022, from $82.9 billion in 2021 to $87.3 billion in 2022. It is the second biggest revenue category, with a 39% share. Despite the sharp decrease in traditional pay TV subscribers, traditional TV ads still managed to grow revenue by 1.5% to $66.6 billion. Connected TV ad revenue grew much more strongly, increasing by 20% to $20.7 billion.
Does revenue allocation reflect viewing time?
According to Nielsen’s The Gauge, in December 2022, streaming delivered a third of TV viewing time, while cable and broadcast were responsible for 55.6%. On the other hand, traditional TV sources delivered 75% of the revenue, with streaming contributing 25%. On the face of it, revenue from traditional TV is far higher than its viewing time would justify.
However, we should be careful with this data. There is uncertainty about the accuracy of Nielsen’s The Gauge. It is also unclear if Nielsen viewing time categories and the revenue categories derived by nScreenMedia are apples-to-apples comparisons.
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